This is a record of my journey as a Muslim. I used to be Catholic and belonged to a missionary organisation. After my conversion, I sat on the board of a Muslim converts' organisation and specialised in da'wah programmes, convert management, interfaith issues and apostasy cases. I am an initiate of a Sufi order. As such, the articles and writings tend to cover these areas.
All the Arabic and graphics could not have been done without the help of my wife, Zafirah.

Friday, 27 November 2009

The Man on the White Horse

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ
ٱلرَّحِيمِ

Shaykh Aslan
Maskhadov, (September 21, 1951 - March 8, 2005) the former President of
Chechnya and a murid of the
Naqshbandi-Haqqani Sufi Order was the architect of the Muslim victory over the
Russians in the first Chechen War. He
was once asked why they could be victorious over the Russians and yet the
Palestinians had problem with the Israelis even when they had Arab support. He said they fought for themselves, whilst the
Chechens fought for Allah (s.w.t.).

The Russians had
surrounded Grozny
with more than 100,000 troops. Before the battle,
they held mawlid and dzikr. They remembered Allah (s.w.t.); they remembered the Battles of Badr and Khandaq. They went forth to fight. Ultimately, what was achieved, Chechen
autonomy, was undone by internal battles with the Wahhabi. They perpetrated the atrocity of Beslan, they
tried to spread the war to Daghistan, they went against the sunnah. And thus Muslims are their own greatest
enemies.

On the 08th
March 2005, ShaykhAslan Maskhadov was made shahid
in an operation by Russian Special Forces despite the fact they were supposed
to have had a ceasefire. His body was
buried in an unmarked grave and the Russians have refused to reveal where they
have disposed of his remains.

In my travels, I
have been many places. I love stories, tales
with meaning, and I picked up many. Once, long after the event and long before I
converted to Islam, I heard this one. I
did not fully understand it nor grasp its significance until much later when I
studied sirah.

In the
aftermath of the reunification of Germany,
many Eastern Europeans including Russians resident in the former East Germany flocked to work in the factories in
the former West Germany.
There, they met many of the Muslim immigrants,
mainly of Kurdish extraction.

Once, in an
unnamed factory, a Russian approached a Kurd and asked if he was Muslim. And the Kurd said he was. And the Russian said he wanted to tell a story
and he hoped the Kurd would listen. During the break, he told this:

“I was a soldier in the armies of the USSR sent
to fight in Afghanistan. I was a tanker
man (meaning he was a tank crewman). Once, we were sent to capture a pass in the
mountains. They were going to
exterminate a village as an example. We
saw a man in white on a white horse blocking the pass. He had a white turban and carried a sword. No guns. We laughed since a horseman had no chance
against our tanks. And then the horseman
charged at us. There was a wind behind
him and the dust moved. The machine
gunners started firing. But there was no
effect. And then the horse was running
on air. And the lead tank exploded. And then the wind came and there was chaos
outside the tank. There were screams and
then there was silence.”